FIKE-MAKING APPARATUS. 



643 



and also use a flint and steel. For tinder they use 

 dry grass or bark fiber. They use also a fungus, 

 polyporus sp., for the same purpose. 



Another reference to the fire making of this stock 

 (Yuman) is found in the translation by the late Dr. 

 Charles Eau of the writings of Father Baegert on 

 the Californian Peninsula.* He says: 



To light a fire, the Califoruian makes no use of steel and 

 flint, but obtains it by the friction of two pieces of wood. 

 One of them is cylindrical and pointed at one end, which fits 

 into a round cavity in the other, and by turning the cylin- 

 drical piece with great rapidity between their hands, like a 

 twirling-stick, they succeed in igniting the lower piece if 

 they continue the process for a sufficient length of time. 



The Navajo fire-set looks very much like a mere 

 makeshift. The hearth is a piece of yucca stalk 

 and the fire-holes have but a shallow side notch. 

 The drill is a broken arrow shaft, to which has been 

 rudely lashed with a cotton rag a smaller piece of 

 yucca wood (fig. 15). This carelessness, which it is 

 rather than lack of skill, is characteristic of the Na- 

 vajos in their minor implements. They resemble 

 the crude Apache in this. One thinks of the Nava- 

 jos only with regard to their fine blanket weaving 

 and silver working, so well presented by Dr. Wash- 

 ington Matthews in the reports of the Bureau of 

 Ethnology, and does not consider their arts in other 

 lines.l 



Mr. Thomas C. Battey, a Friend, long missionary 

 among the Indians, kindly gives a description of 

 the Kiowan fire-making process, not now practiced 

 among them, but shown to him as a relic of an 

 abandoned art : 



A piece of very hard and coarse, rough-grained wood, pei-- 

 haps 8 inches in length, 2 in width, and three-fourths of an 

 Inch in thickness is procured. In one side of this and near 

 pne edge several holes are made, about one-half an inch iu 

 diameter by five-eighths of an inch in depth, rounded at the 

 bottom, but left somewhat rough or very slightly corrugated, 

 In the edge nearest these holes a corresponding number of 

 smaller and tapering holes are made, opening by a small ori- 

 fice into the bottom of each of the larger ones. These are 

 made very smooth. 



A straight stick, also of hard, rough-grained wood, about 8 

 or 10 inches in length, about the siae they usually DQaJie theif 



•Smithsonian Report, 1865. p, 367, 



tOr. Matthews'a mouutaiu cliaut of the Navajos^ iu tUa liftli 

 >i4ijual fsport (1883''^4) oi' the Bureau of Etbaolugy^ giyea 

 auine very ^trikinjj cdremouiai uses of fiie, Ko ethnologist 

 gijouid ti)/\\ to voiHl \i\m impoftiiut ooufet iljnU«u t/o ^fii^ueet 



. 



(Obi. No.Si64,i;. S,H. 





